Yet Another Ruling That Competitive Keyword Ad Lawsuits Are Stupid–Louisiana Pacific v. James Hardie (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Louisiana Pacific Corp. v. James Hardie Building Products, Inc., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 162980 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 14, 2012). The initial complaint. The amended complaint filed after this ruling. It’s been surreal watching plaintiff-side trademark lawyers lament…
Lawsuit Over “Google Tags” Dismissed–Frezza v. Google
By Eric Goldman Frezza v. Google, 2012 WL 5877587 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 20, 2012) In Feb. 2010, Google introduced Google Tags, an advertising option in Google Places. Google Tags is now dead, but Google’s still dealing with the aftermath. To…
Expert Report on the Value of Consumer Review Websites and 47 USC 230
By Eric Goldman [Eric’s note: most expert reports in litigation never see the light of day. Naturally, this collides with my blogger’s ethos of leaving no thought unpublished. As a result, after preparing this expert report regarding the social value…
AmeriGas Gives Up Its Lawsuit Against PissedConsumer
By Eric Goldman AmeriGas and Opinion Corp. (PissedConsumer) have settled their case. Law360 report. My prior blog post on a preliminary ruling in this case. I blog about settlements only occasionally, but I thought this settlement was interesting for two…
Engaging Facebook Friends Doesn’t Violate Non-Solicitation Clause–Invidia v. DiFonzo
By Eric Goldman Invidia, LLC, v. Maren DiFonzo, 2012 WL 5576406 (Mass. Super. Ct. Oct. 22, 2012) Let me start with a baseline proposition: we in California have it so much better than the rest of the country because employer-employee…
Scribd Botches Its Frictionless Sharing Implementation…AGAIN (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman I’m generally a skeptic of “frictionless sharing,” such as automatically publishing to my friends a list of the articles I’ve read. Frictionless sharing takes a good idea–sharing with my friends the best things I’ve seen in the day–and…
Preview of Our “Solutions to the Software Patent Problem” Conference
By Eric Goldman On Friday, we’re having our big academic conference of the semester, “Solutions to the Software Patent Problem.” At the conference, experts will propose their ideas of how to fix software patents. Ultimately, we hope there will be…
Another Google AdWords Advertiser Defeats Trademark Infringement Lawsuit–CollegeSource v. AcademyOne (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman CollegeSource, Inc. v. AcademyOne, Inc., 2012 WL 5269213 (E.D. Pa. October 25, 2012) Over the last dozen years, there have been countless trademark lawsuits over competitive keyword advertising (i.e., when a company buys its competitor’s trademark to display…
Pro Se Discrimination Lawsuit Against Google Fails–Ajuluchuku v. Google
By Eric Goldman Ajuluchuku v. Google, 2012 WL 5464358 (E.D. Cal. November 7, 2012). Her initial complaint. The third amended complaint. It doesn’t bring me joy to blog “in forma pauperis” pro se lawsuits against Internet companies. Sometimes they are…
Intellectual Property on the Internet: A Brief Comparison of the Current Situation in Europe and the United States (Guest Blog Post)
by Guest Blogger Pablo García Mexía, J.D., Ph.D [Visiting Professor of Internet Law, The College of William & Mary. English translation by Morgan G. Fletcher, B.A. Cornell, William & Mary Law School, Class of 2014. The original Spanish version of…